Book Talk | ‘Doing Research as a Native: A Guide for Fieldwork in Repressive and Illiberal States’

The Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry welcomes Kira Jumet, associate professor from Hamilton College, and Merouan Mekouar, associate professor from York University (joining remotely), as they launch their new book. They will be joined by chapter authors Dilafruz Nazarova from Rutgers University and Mona Bhan from Syracuse University.

“Doing Research as a Native: A Guide for Fieldwork in Illiberal and Repressive States” (Oxford University Press, 2025) identifies the challenges faced by scholars conducting fieldwork in their native authoritarian, semi-authoritarian or illiberal countries, and prepares them to better navigate those risks and obstacles.

The edited volume offers fieldwork accounts and experiences from 19 scholars representing 15 countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, the Balkans and South America who conducted fieldwork in their native illiberal and/or repressive countries and faced challenges directly related to their position as native scholars. It also contains practical advice on how to manage, and prepare for, these challenges.

While publications on fieldwork often center on the experiences of Western or non-native scholars, this book attempts to decolonize fieldwork by focusing on the experiences, and elevating the voices, of scholars researching in their native non-western or semi-peripheral repressive states. 

After the talk there will be an in-room reception until 4:15 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.

This event is co-sponsored by the Moynihan Institutes’ Study of Global Politics talk series.

Kira D. Jumet is Associate Professor of Government and Director of Middle East/Islamicate Worlds Studies at Hamilton College. Her research focuses on authoritarianism, social movements, identity, and soft power diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa, and she specializes in field research and ethnographic methods. Jumet is the author of Contesting the Repressive State: Why Ordinary Egyptians Protested During the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press, 2018) and the Egypt chapter for Routledge’s Government and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa. She has also published on intensified repressive practices under Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Islamic State-Sinai Province, and Islamist political parties. Jumet’s research on Morocco has been funded by the American Association of University Women and American Philosophical Society.

Merouan Mekouar is associate professor in the Department of Social Science at York University, specializing in norm diffusion, social movements, and authoritarian practices in the Middle East and North Africa. Drawing on political science, sociology and economics, his research examines social mobilization under authoritarian settings, regime learning and security organization stress. A key focus is norm diffusion in information-poor settings, with recent work incorporating critical fieldwork methodologies in repressive environments. (This speaker will be joining remotely)

Merouan’s publications include a single-authored book on authoritarian collapse and collective action (Routledge, 2016) and a co-edited volume on surveillance and repression in the MENA region (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). His research is supported by grants from SSHRC and DAAD, and he actively disseminates his findings through large audience publications such as the Economist and the Washington Post, media appearances and international collaborations. Merouan is also a dedicated mentor to junior scholars from the Global South.